Fenella Morris QC & Benjamin Tankel, acting for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board and the six other Welsh trusts, are instructed in the £250m dispute over who pays for nurses delivering social care in residential homes in Wales, which has been heard by the Supreme Court.

The NHS pays for 24-hour healthcare, while general care needs are funded privately or by the council.

But health boards and Welsh councils cannot agree who should pay when a person needs certain healthcare – but not around the clock.

Care home companies claim the row has left them waiting to be paid.

Fenella Morris QC argued that if a nurse carried out a social care task, it did not make it an NHS obligation but work for a local authority.

“We say the NHS is entitled to decide that where a local authority is required to provide social care and a nurse is present to provide social care, it is not necessary for the NHS to pay the cost of that social care.”